Figure 2. Average values of manual surveys of snow depth in four forest types.

Figure 3. Temperature (in degrees C, see colorbar on left) as a function of time and distance along the forest floor at a second-growth forest study site. Solid dark blue lines (0C) illustrate the presence of snow cover, which insulates the ground and prevents diurnal temperature fluctuations. Forest treatments are identified on the right, where both ‘Forest’ and ‘Control’ indicate untreated 80-yr old forest. While snow persisted longer in the gaps than the untreated and thinned forest plots, the variability between different gaps was more than one week.